So in this example if you wanted to be a friend with me, your id would be the other_user_id and mine would be user_id and the status could be set to pending, if I accept you could change the status to accepted or however you would like.

Also if @user is equal to the current logged in user, in your view you could just call @user.friends to get all of your friends regardless of status.

So in this example if you wanted to be a friend with me, your id would be the other_user_id and mine would be user_id and the status could be set to pending, if I accept you could change the status to accepted or however you would like.

Also if @user is equal to the current logged in user, in your view you could just call @user.friends to get all of your friends regardless of status.